1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to networking, and more particularly to redundant links and devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a high availability (HA) environment, it is common to have parallel devices at each data center to allow for rerouting in cases of device or link failure. It is common to use load balancing techniques when there are multiple paths between two data centers, as would occur when there are parallel devices at each data center. Similarly, load balancing is often done within the data center to provide more uniform loading of devices in a given class or function. This can result in routing problems if Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connections are made at a particular device and then the load balancing changes the routing so that a different device at the data center receives at least portions of the succeeding transmissions. Either the TCP context is not present or significant forwarding between devices must occur.